The thesis explores how the science fiction genre approaches the philosophico-anthropological concepts of personhood and bodily autonomy. Works of science fiction offer the opportunity to address fundamental philosophical questions outside the context of real life through fictional examples. One of the questions that the genre often addresses is the question of personhood: what does it mean to be a person and on what basis do we consider someone to be a person? Personhood is a social category that is distinguished from the ontological category of the self. One must be recognized as a person by society, which means that society can also deny someone this status. Together with the concept of personhood, the thesis discusses the right to bodily autonomy, because the former is often understood as a condition for the latter. The problem of defining a person is first presented through two different definitions of the criteria of personhood, as argued by Mary Anne Warren and Robert Sparrow. This is followed by an analysis of selected science fiction cases. The example of the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? deals with empathy as a criterion for personhood. The motif of the cyborg, through the literary works »No Woman Born«, »The Ship Who Sang« and The Murderbot Diaries and the animated film Ghost in the Shell, represents the intersection of man and machine and the consequences that such a merger has for the understanding of the person and the body. The final part of the thesis deals with the artificial separation between body and the self, as depicted in the show Severance and the film Mickey 17 in the context of the capitalist exploitation of workers.
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